Ha! This morning I was watching the news in some satellite channel, and they were showing a report about a Thai guy who owns several "massage parlors". He's trying to make a name for himself in Thai politics.

It was funny how this lady reporter was asking questions to the Thai businessman (or pimp?). This guy claimed that he simply runs his massage parlors charging his customers for the use of the rooms, but once the customer and the massage girl close the door, he doesn't really know what happens inside (?).

Then he proceeded to show her one of his lower end massage rooms. It looked almost like a hotel room, very simple, but spotless I should say. They even showed the bathtub where he explained that the girl bathes the customer. (Ummm).

Then this lady reporter asks if the customer has to bring his own soap? I was a bit stunned by the question, and was wondering if the next question would be if the customer also has to bring his own towel?

"Learn to speak our language"... "You should learn to speak from me"... "A-ha, na-ha-ha".

Yeah right, you make your language sound absolutely uncool with that obnoxiously chirping voice.

Man, I know that's a good guy, but we just don't click. And I also know I need to learn their language. But what am I gonna do if the person whom I have closest also makes it sound so ugly?

Two things, actually three:

The bomb attacks in Istanbul are an horrendous event, and I'm sorry people with no guilt nor interest whatsoever might have been injured or even killed.

I was watching the news on BBC (where else?), and heard them saying that Bush declared that those attacks "show that terrorists hate freedom". I'm like, excuse me? Where's the logic behind this statement? You don't even know for sure (although we can strongly suspect) who did it, and you jump to the conclusion that whoever did it hates freedom? If that's a valid reasoning process for "world leaders", let me add my contribution: "Let's put one and one together: Bush is a moron".

Another thing: I saw Michael Jackson's latest pictures. I think he looks freaky. I don't like one bit what he did to his own face. I can't help wondering why? He wasn't a particularly ugly guy before all this. If he says that he had a skin problem that leaves it with spots of different colors, okay. But does he have to make his nose pointy? And what about that uncurled hair? I think he did something to his eyes too. In my humble opinion, his face is uglier now than what HE probably thought it was before all this remodeling. Yuck!

I mean, there're many singers who are ugly, but sing great (Justin, Robbie, Brian, Darryl, etc., etc.). And none of them needed plastic surgery to get my appreciation. Michael, there's nothing wrong with being black!

Last night I was astonished again watching the BBC news. They were reporting live on Bush's visit to London, and they had this white lady making comments. She was speaking with an American accent by the way.

I wonder where did they find such a bitch, and why would they choose to let her talk nonsense to the world! Instead of enlightening, she was stupidifying the world via satellite using British taxpayers' money.

What enraged me was that she was saying the reason why Bush had become a trusted good friend of Tony is that "Bush speaks the truth" (I wonder in which planet was this lady when Bush was telling the world about the dangers of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction), and that "when Bush says he'll do something, he does it. Not like the previous president Clinton who said he'd do many things, but then he didn't do anything.". We'll, at least Clinton didn't give American foreign policy a shameful image.

The voice of that other guy in the office is driving me crazy! He's a good guy, but the way he talks AND the sound of his voice... I'm going nuts.

The sound of his voice is very high pitched and at the same time a bit rough, as if he has a badly dry throat (all the time). And the way he speaks... no matter the language, he repeats over and over "a-ha, na-ha-ha".

Can't we have in this office Frank Sinatra instead?

I'm stunned at the stupidity I heard on TV...

This morning I was watching the news on BBC. They were talking about the "special bonds" between the US and Britain and how people think of that in light of the "war on terror". Since they were reporting from Cambridge, Massachusetts, you'd think that all the people who show up in the street interviews are rather highly educated... Until I saw this young white woman:

She said that that special relationship, the loyalty that Britain has for the US, is very important because it gives "legitimacy" to the war in Iraq.

I wonder, "legitimate"? Legitimate since when? Legitimate under which law? See what the Merriam-Webster dictionary has to say about legitimacy: Merriam-Webster OnLine

Just because Tony supports the war, that makes an injustice just? How is it possible to turn a crime into a "legitimate" action with the simple blessing of a politician who's not popular even in his own country? This woman is seriously ignorant, and she was talking just blocks away from Harvard University and MIT! Go figure.

But again, if people as ignorant as George W Bush (the "misunderestimated" guy, the "master of low expectations") become president of the US, you can only wonder what kind of people are voting for a guy like that.

Motorist threatens to sue police for writing his name

... in the country where teenagers try to sue McDonald's for making them fat, an incident like this shouldn't raise any eyebrows.

Finally the Japanese guy is gone! He left this morning for the airport. Hopefully everything went fine and by now, he's comfortably flying home. He's a good friend, but since he came he'd been behaving a bit strange (different than when we were in Japan), and it made me kind of uncomfortable at times.

I thought it was funny last night he was saying that perhaps if he hadn't gone to buy that dreadful airticket last week, none of this would have happened. He already had a return airticket, but he saw an opportunity to save money by buying yet another one here. But when he did so, he was stolen so many of his valuables, and at the end he didn't save money, he ended up losing a lot.

He left me his flight number and his mom's phone number to notify her in case his place crashes. I thought he was joking. He wasn't.

And also, he finally said something about my stolen backpack! He was asking where I bought it and stuff. I told him not to worry about it. (Actually, it was a rather expensive backpack I'd bought in Japan with my ex many years ago, so it had a sentimental value as well). He said he'd get me another one. I don't really want to bother him with that. But at least I'm happy that he acknowledges that my property was also stolen; so far he'd only been talking about his own stuff and his own stuff.

Yesterday I saw on BBC World an interview with the governor of the state of Colorado. The interviewer introduced him as having been labeld as "the best state governor" by I don't know who.

I believe his name was something Owens, and he's a Republican. They were talking about how things were going in Iraq. I was astonished by this guy. I wonder who the hell said that that is the best state governor? He must be an idiot.

If you didn't read the news and only listened to what governor Owens said, you'd think that all in all, things are going quite well in Iraq. President Bush claiming victory with a huge banner behind him reading "mission accomplished", no problem; people were just missinterpreting him. Blah blah blah. Unbelievable.

If the war has really been won I wonder, then how come freshly dead US soldiers are still being flown back home on a nearly daily basis? What kind of freedom for the Iraqi people is this guy talking about when they have been imposed a puppet regime? Where are the weapons of mass destruction that were the primal reason to go to attack Iraq cause they were a threat to the American life style? How and when are the occupation forces going to leave Iraq so the Iraqi people can lead their own lives? Will they be free to have an Islamic republic if that's what the population wants?

This is all bullshit.

Man, I'm in this country, trying to settle down here, and of course I'm expected to learn the local language. Makes sense. But unfortunately, after more than six months, my knowledge of the language is really scant.

This may sound ridiculous, but one of the big turn offs of this language is that the guy I get to spend most time with at the office speaks it in a totally uncool way. It's his voice. It's very high pitched. And there's a word he tends to repeat all too often, even when he speaks in English! "Ah-ha, na-ha-ha".

Try to imagine hearing somebody repeating all day long that thing with a high pitched voice, regardless of language and being asked to learn to speak like him? This is the kind of speak you'd least expect to find in a radio talk show host. It's ugly!

But I have overheard girls and other guys speaking the same language, and they do make it sound kind of posh. Gee, how I wish I had somebody with that voice to teach me!

When I went back to my place last night, as expected, my Japanese friend wasn't there. Later on, when I came out of the shower, he was already there... still talking about the theft of his stuff (and not one single word regarding MY beloved backpack that was stolen to him!).

He said he'd been again to the place where it had all happened, and saw a bunch of suspicious guys who appeared to be plotting another snatch in the very same table he was sitting in a few days ago. He said blah blah blah. Whatever, dude.

I went downstairs to check the newspapers and the Discovery Channel, and when I went upstairs again, he was on his mobile phone again. Soon after, we fell asleep. But this morning, when I woke up, surprise suprise! he wasn't there anymore. How did he get up so early without using an alarm clock? Perhaps he didn't sleep at all last night, and was just pretending and waiting for me to fall asleep and then leave? None of this makes sense, he's a grownup, he's not my girlfriend, and maybe I shouldn't care... but it bugs me.

One strange thing I noticed though was that last night he'd come to my place pretty smelly. Makes me wonder... whichever girl's place he slept at the previous night... don't they have water and soap there?

Last night I went to pick up my new suit! Yeah! I need it for my new job, which will hopefully start within a couple of weeks, by the end of the month at the latest. I'm glad that I tried it again at the department store before bringing it home. In the past, it has happened to me that I go shopping for a new suit, they measure me, they supposedly fix it, then I go back to the shop, and bring it home, only to find at home that either the pants or the sleeves of the jacket are still too long.

Last night the pants were still about one inch too long. I'm amazed at how can they get it wrong for one inch! But since this fix doesn't require any kind of high surgery, they re-did it almost on the spot. It just took about 30 minutes while I went to check other parts of the store.

Last Saturday I went to a really nice department store. I needed to buy some clothes, and this was my first time buying those things in this country, so I wanted to look around a lot to get a good idea of prices before I let go of my hard earned money.

At one point I found next to the elevators a huge poster advertising underwear for men. I don't know why would they use a picture like that, but I'd swear the photograph's guy was hiding in his undies a hard on. I couldn't believe it. That was not an adult store nor anything, just a swanky store.

Anyway, I was quite happy shopping this past weekend, because just by chance the timing of my need to buy stuff coincided with the Halloween weekend, so practically everything was discounted! I must've saved quite a lot of money.

Is this Murphy's Law in action or what?

This Japanese guy who's been 'staying' at my place for nearly three weeks now was supposed to leave on Friday morning, but he's still in my place who knows until when.

He'd told me last week that he'd spend Thursday looking for a new return ticket (cause he wanted to save the one he already has). Not that I want to kick him out, but when I met him on Thursday evening, he said he hadn't got anything done. He'd spend the day mostly sleeping cause he hadn't slept the previous night; he was out having fun.

That's okay with me. That Thursday night we went out together to have some sort of farewell dinner, we walked around the bar area, and then came back to my place to sleep.

On Friday I left early, as usual, for work. But then in the evening I got a phone call from him saying that he'd been stolen all of his important stuff right after buying his new ticket. He said that after buying his ticket (departing for Japan on Saturday morning), he'd gone to some outdoor place to have some coffee. He'd placed MY backpack on the floor, next to his feet, while reading the newspapers and doing some SMS on his mobile phone. And next time he looked, MY backpack was gone!

What was inside my backpack: his Sony Vaio laptop computer, a nice photograph camera, his passport, his new airticket, his old (and still unused) airticket, a lot of cash, his credit card, a lot of traveller's cheques... and oh, his memo pad. Oh, and did I mention... that stolen memo pad was the only place where he'd taken note of the traveller's cheques number?

I thought that was very stupid, it was almost his own fault for carrying all those valuables when he doesn't need them just to purchase an airticket. Why the hell would you need a laptop computer to buy an airticket? And why do you keep only one note of your traveller's cheques, and keep it together with them? Doesn't that beat the purpose of using traveller's cheques? And why do you carry traveller's cheques in the first place if you already have enough cash to pay for the ticket? And on top of that, he just said once that the whole bag was stolen, period.

He never really gave it a thought that it was my bag. For him it was just an old bag. For me, that backpack had some sentimental value cause my ex had picked it for me, and I'd used it for so many years in trips to four continents... so it's not like just an old piece of shit to me. He never said a single word of "I'm sorry I borrowed your stuff and now it's gone.". You're welcome, dude!

Anyway, that Friday he just called me to let me know he'd been stolen, and (oh, surprise!) that he wouldn't come back early cause there was this girl who'd been helping him at the police station and stuff, and he needed to show some appreciation somehow. I'm really surprised he's just been stolen his money, his airticket, and his passport, but he's still in the mood for partying. Whatever.

When I finally saw him on Saturday night, he looked grim, and was telling me he really believed this was some sort of punishment from god. I thought he was kidding, but he assured me he was serious.

Well, that sorrow feeling didn't last very long. I had something to do on Sunday, so I left in the morning. Now it's Monday morning, and I haven't heard from him since then. Obviously, he's deeply troubled and anguished with his sins.